There’s a truly strange problem with cognition. At least, for me.

You’re almost always better off not ‘knowing’ ‘what’ something or someone ‘is’. I don’t mean complete oblivion in awareness, however.

I mean the gentle. but firm… suspension of the habits with which we classify identity, situations and experience.

And here’s why I say this: most of my classification / evaluation activity is based on ‘generalizations’. That’s already problematic; those generalizations are crude at best, and many of them are fraught with invisible presumptions, assumptions, or utility.

It gets worse, however. Much worse.

Secretly, underneath my awareness, usually, the evaluations »transform the possibility space of both »relation… and my own explorations of being. Not of ‘who I am’, but rather ‘who I may become’. Especially with others. Or nature.

So I »think I am evaluation ‘stuff outside me’.

But the existence of ‘outside me’ is »primarily a misconception. It’s a way of »thinking. There »is something going on, but inside and outside are not as distinct as we might suppose. Because their identity is determined not by categories, but by »relational inter-participation.

So when I decide that “I know what (x) is.” I am not doing »what I think I’m doing. There are simple, utilitarian exceptions to this. The problem is that I tend to transfer that »method of identification to aspects of being and experience where it’s nearly the worst move available.

When I decide what or who something or someone is… what is actually going on is that I am unconsciously delimiting the relational and awareness space… for »myself.

In fact, during the usually instantaneous and invisible ‘execution’ of the categorization / generalization ‘knowing’… I disappear. Because I become that process. And if I am unaware of this… I simply continue on with disemboweling whatever it may be that has aroused my evaluation habits.

We are »far better off noticing and largely suspending this process. Almost always. Or, at least, in any situation that is beyond the scope of such simple evaluations as are common to our lives and well-being.

Don’t touch the boiling water.

Ok.

But do something other than transfer that simplistic a method of evaluating identity onto circumstances or subjects of perception.

One burns your finger.

The other burns your capacity to know what a mind can be.